you can't spell involved without love
by chocolatebearturk
Summary: Jeff and Britta get involved.


It's not like they actually agreed on anything. It's not like, one day, they both sat down at her tiny kitchen table and one of them said, "So, this is kind of turning into a relationship." In all honesty, they're probably afraid to do just that. She doesn't think his jokes are funny. He thinks her extreme liberalism is pointless. She wrinkles her nose as she watches him tear into a steak. He pokes fun at her when she takes out a bit of knitting for her cat.

They just don't _work_. They aren't a couple and they aren't in love—they proved that the first week back, she thinks. Shirley says they bring out the worst in each other, and Annie and Abed have both commented on their lack of chemistry. They bicker like brothers and sisters, Troy tells them. And Pierce, surprisingly enough, thinks she's too good for him.

She tells herself that they're right. They're not good for one another, they're like brother and sister, she deserves better.

She shouldn't care. She _shouldn't_. But she does. She doesn't know when it started, but she does.

_(A wise voice in the back of her mind informs her politely that it started somewhere between the moment they met and the moment after that.)_

She isn't a statistics professor. He isn't a hippie. They don't have a relationship, really, because a relationship is something open with the things they don't have time for, like affection and trust and love and understanding and forever.

What they _do_ have, though, feels different than just sex. They don't just meet up in broom closets and sleep at one another's houses. He doesn't leave right after they're done and she doesn't sneak out of bed before he wakes up. They eat together, they sleep together, his toothbrush finds its way into her bathroom and he starts picking up her favorite soda every time he goes grocery shopping. He helps her pick out a new couch. She's there when he breaks it to his mother that he's not a lawyer anymore.

_("But at least you've found yourself someone to settle down with," the woman says, smirking at him and winking at her. They have no time to protest before she changes the subject.)_

They still don't do relationship things. They don't move in together, though her clothes are strewn around his bedroom and his DVDs have collected in a stack on top of her television. They don't go out on dates, but they stop at Starbucks on the way to school most mornings and one of them cooks or they order in most nights and there was that one time they decided to catch _The Tourist_ while it was still in theaters and he played keep-away with her jacket.

They still don't bother with things like affection and understanding and forever, but somewhere along the line, the L-word creeps into her mind.

She doesn't tell him, of course. They aren't friends anymore—they may have never been. Somewhere, somehow, they went past the realms of friendship and blundered straight into What Are We? He doesn't try to label them, of course, and she pretends she doesn't know why, but she knows the truth. To label is to define and to define is to commit and commitment is one of those things that they just don't _do_. It's scary and painful and she doesn't like to think about it.

Someone else would handle this better than she has, she's sure. Shirley could and would turn to God for advice—and who knows? She just may get it. Annie would be able to think about it rationally and come to a solution. Maybe not a _happy_ solution, but a solution nonetheless. All she's got is nerves and sweat and she clings as hard as she can, because if she closes her eyes, if she loosens her grip just for a second, it'll all disappear and never come back.

_(You know how they say it's better to have loved and lost? Yeah, that's total bullshit.)_

When it happens—the whole understanding and defining and hey-are-we-actually-committing-to-something deal—it's not like she expected. There isn't yelling or crying or doors slamming or hair pulling or screaming _I love you, damn it!_ down the hall. There isn't tender kissing or angry love-making or even, like, an open-faced sandwich with "I love you" written on it in mustard. It just kind of… happens.

They're sitting on her couch and eating Chinese when he turns to her and says, "So, this is kind of turning into a relationship."

_(She could swear her heart was working perfectly fine just a second ago.)_

"What makes you say that?" she asks, digging through her fried rice for a piece of carrot.

"I figure I have to love you if I'm washing your dirty underwear," he says sardonically. She doesn't need to turn to look at him to know he's got a douchey smile on his face. She turns anyway.

"No, really," she says. "Because you can't joke about this shit. Not when I'm in love with you."

"If I were joking, you'd be laughing," he says.

Snorting, she tells him, "_So_ not."

"You're not exactly a queen of comedy yourself, Miss Toad-in-a-sombrero."

"Pierce tells better jokes than you!"

"Oh, don't you even go there!"

/end.


End file.
